NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

By: Jim Hodges

Shortly after 5 p.m. on the Friday before Labor Day, Whit Seay hit a button and the big fans at the end of NASA Langley’s Full Scale Tunnel ground to a halt.

“We were joking about it when he hit the stop button,” said John Bledsoe, who worked with Seay at the tunnel. “We were talking about it being the last time, and then the engineer who was running the test came up and said, ‘No, we need one more.’ ”

The fans, with their 35.5-foot diameter blades and 4,000 horsepower motors, went back on. It was as if a condemned man had gotten a reprieve.

An hour later, Seay hit the button and it was over.

A picture from 1934 that includes Charles Lindbergh, Howard Hughes, Glenn Curtiss and Orville Wright is an indicator of the history of the Full Scale Tunnel, but people who worked there say their focus was forward, seldom backward. Credit: NASA

Click image to enlarge

Seventy-eight years of testing, from biplanes through spacecraft, and most of the military planes that made a difference in this nation’s wars since 1931 have gone through the tunnel. The last, the X-48C, could be the future of commercial aviation.

“It didn’t hit us at first that it was really over,” Seay said.

It did hit Dan Vicroy, who brought over a bottle of sparkling cider to toast the end of a test and the passing of an era in aviation.

For Bledsoe, memories of the past decade or so include working in the tunnel as a technician and taking advantage of exposure to the ODU faculty while earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering. And Seay remembers testing race cars in the facility.

But others remember earlier times, when NASA ran the tunnel and it was an aviation icon.

“It was like a second home to us,” said Sue Grafton, then as now a research engineer.

The picture on the wall of aviation pioneers, of Orville Wright and Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes and Glenn Curtiss and others, is a reminder of the tunnel’s place in history, but looking back wasn’t for people doing tests there with Grafton.

“We were getting new things,” said Grafton, who worked 33 years in the tunnel.

“We knew there had been things done there that were wonderful and rewarding, and perhaps the tunnel had a lot to do with winning World War II.”

Every major U.S. fighter plane during the war was tested in the Full Scale Tunnel.

“We knew all that, but we were excited about what we were doing and what we could develop and how we could move forward,” Grafton said.

For decades, she tested aircraft, primarily those of the military, usually getting early concepts as many as 20 years before they ever saw service.

It was like an aircraft lineage, in which the F-106 begat the F-4, which begat the F-14 and on and on, though F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, F-22 and even the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that has yet to be employed. "Each one was different, which was what made the job so interesting,” Grafton said.

“Yes, it was a model and the same type of testing, but each was different in how you had to build it, how you had to accommodate the various things you needed and what you had to do to figure out how to improve it.”

Aircraft were torn apart to see what worked and what didn’t, and to learn if the whole could be made better if some of the parts were improved.

That quest for improvement is what drives engineers and keeps them going back to the tunnels.

“It’s very exciting,” Grafton said. “When you’re able to improve it and pass on this technology that maybe gets used by the next generation, it’s wonderful.”

Aircraft changed over the years. So did procedures at the Full Scale Tunnel. The advent of the computer, improved instrumentation and automation made data collection easier, and so more data could be collected.

People who worked there remember all of that, but more, they remember the people they worked with.

“We were a close-knit group,” Grafton said. “We had to be. Most of the things we did there, we had to do together. A free flight model or the drop model program took at least eight or more people to perform it.

“So you worked together, and you had to like each other. You were dependent on the next person when your next project came along. You needed them to help you.”

They are the people Grafton hopes to see Wednesday, at the ceremony marking the closing of the tunnel, which will gradually disappear in the coming months as it is torn down.

“This field is covered with people who one way or another had some contact with that tunnel,” she said.

For all of the nostalgia the event will bring, she is not looking at it as a funeral.

“Change is a part of life,” Grafton said. “To me, next Wednesday is a celebration of 80 years of that tunnel and the people who were fortunate enough to be a part of it.”


 
NASA Langley Research Center
Managing Editor: Jim Hodges
Executive Editor and Responsible NASA Official: H. Keith Henry
Editor and Curator: Denise Lineberry